HOME
*





Flournoy Miller
Flournoy Eakin Miller (14 April 1885 – 6 June 1971), sometimes credited as F. E. Miller, was an American entertainer, actor, lyricist, producer and playwright. Between about 1905 and 1932 he formed a popular comic duo, Miller and Lyles, with Aubrey Lyles. Described as "an innovator who advanced black comedy and entertainment significantly," and as "one of the seminal figures in the development of African American musical theater on Broadway", Jon C. Hopwood, "F. E. Miller", ''IMDb.com''
Retrieved 11 July 2014
he wrote many successful and

picture info

Columbia, Tennessee
Columbia is a city in and the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee. The population was 41,690 as of the 2020 United States census. Columbia is included in the Nashville metropolitan area. The self-proclaimed "mule capital of the world," Columbia annually celebrates the city-designated Mule Day each April. Columbia and Maury County are acknowledged as the "Antebellum Homes Capital of Tennessee"; the county has more Antebellum architecture, antebellum houses than any other county in the state. The city is home to one of the last two surviving residences of James K. Polk, James Knox Polk, the 11th President of the United States; the other is the White House. History A year after the organization of Maury County, Tennessee, Maury County in 1807, Columbia was laid out in 1808 and lots were sold. The original town, on the south bank of the Duck River (Tennessee), Duck River, consisted of four blocks. The town was incorporated in 1817. Columbia was the site of Jackson College (Te ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 2020 census, Montgomery's population was 200,603. It is the second most populous city in Alabama, after Huntsville, and is the 119th most populous in the United States. The Montgomery Metropolitan Statistical Area's population in 2020 was 386,047; it is the fourth largest in the state and 142nd among United States metropolitan areas. The city was incorporated in 1819 as a merger of two towns situated along the Alabama River. It became the state capital in 1846, representing the shift of power to the south-central area of Alabama with the growth of cotton as a commodity crop of the Black Belt and the rise of Mobile as a mercantile port on the Gulf Coast. In February 1861, Montgomery was chosen the first capital of the Confederate States of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

I'm Just Wild About Harry
"I'm Just Wild About Harry" is a song written in 1921 with lyrics by Noble Sissle and music by Eubie Blake for the Broadway show ''Shuffle Along''. "I'm Just Wild About Harry" was the most popular number of the production, which was the first financially successful Broadway play to have African-American writers and an all African-American cast. The song broke what had been a taboo against musical and stage depictions of romantic love between African-Americans. Originally written as a waltz, Blake rewrote the number as a foxtrot at the singer's request. The result was a simple, direct, joyous, and infectious tune enhanced onstage by improvisational dancing. In 1948 Harry S Truman selected "I'm Just Wild About Harry" as his campaign song for the United States presidential election of 1948. Its success in politics led to a popular revival. Background Both "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and the show ''Shuffle Along'' broke racial taboos. During the early 20th century African-American ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Noble Sissle
Noble Lee Sissle (July 10, 1889 – December 17, 1975) was an American jazz composer, lyricist, bandleader, singer, and playwright, best known for the Broadway musical ''Shuffle Along'' (1921), and its hit song "I'm Just Wild About Harry". Early life Sissle was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, around the time his father Rev. George A. Sissle was pastor of the city's Simpson M. E. Chapel.Reef (2010) His mother, Martha Angeline (née Scott) Sissle, was a school teacher and juvenile probation officer. As a youth, Sissle sang in church choirs and as a soloist with his high school's glee club in Cleveland, Ohio. Sissle attended De Pauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on scholarship and later transferred to Butler University in Indianapolis before turning to music full-time. Career In early 1916, Sissle joined one of the society orchestras organized by James Reese Europe in New York. He persuaded Europe to also hire his friend, pianist and composer Eubie Blake, a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Eubie Blake
James Hubert "Eubie" Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote ''Shuffle Along'', one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical ''Eubie!'' showcased his works. Early years Blake was born at 319 Forrest Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks. Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003— U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his b ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Broadway Theater
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the List of Broadway theaters, 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the Theatre, theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional Theater (structure), theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District, Manhattan, Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End theatre, West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous wi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Benjamin Franklin Keith
Benjamin Franklin Keith (January 26, 1846 – March 26, 1914) was an American vaudeville theater owner, highly influential in the evolution of variety theater into vaudeville. Biography Early years Keith was born in Hillsboro Bridge, New Hampshire. He joined the circus (as a "candy butcher") after attending Van Amburg's Circus and then worked at Bunnell's Museum in New York City in the early 1860s. He later joined P.T. Barnum and then joined the Forepaugh Circus, before he opened a curio museum in Boston, in 1883, with Colonel William Austin. In 1885 he joined Edward Franklin Albee II, who was selling circus tickets and operating the Boston Bijou Theatre. Their opening show was on July 6, 1885. The theatre was one of the early adopters of the continuous variety show which ran from 10:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night, every day. Previously, shows ran at fixed intervals with several hours of downtime between shows. With the continuous show, you could enter the theatr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

James Reese Europe
James Reese Europe (February 22, 1881 – May 9, 1919) was an American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African Americans music scene of New York City in the 1910s. Eubie Blake called him the "Martin Luther King of music". Early life Europe was born in Mobile, Alabama, to Henry Jefferson Europe (1848–1899) and Loraine Saxon ''(maiden;'' 1849–1930). His family – which included four siblings, Minnie Europe (Mrs. George Mayfield; 1868–1931), Ida S. Europe (1870–1919), John Newton Europe (1875–1932), and Mary Loraine (1883–1947) – moved to Washington, D.C., when he was 10.Lefferts, Peter M."Chronology and Itinerary of the Career of James Reese Europe: Materials for a Biography" University of Nebraska–Lincoln, School of Music, July 29, 2016."New York, New York City Marriage Records, 1829–1940," FamilySearch (database), February 10, 2018, New York City Municipal Archives; FHL microfilm 1,614,008> Euro ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Musical Theater
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre wor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Abbie Mitchell
__NOTOC__ Abriea "Abbie" Mitchell Cook (25 September 1884 – 16 March 1960), also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer. She performed the role of Clara in the premiere production of George Gershwin's ''Porgy and Bess'' in 1935, and was also the first to record " Summertime" from that musical. Biography Mitchell was the mixed-race daughter of an African-American mother and a Jewish-German father from New York City's Lower East Side.D. C. Hine, ed., ''Black Women in America, An Historical Encyclopedia''. Carlson Publishing Inc., 1993. . She was reared by a maternal aunt, Alice Payne, in Baltimore, Maryland, where she attended a Catholic convent school.Abbie Mitchell
, in ''Notable Black American Women'', Book 1. Gale Research, 1992.
Mitchell never completed her formal schooling in Baltimore. Following the dea ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


André Charlot
André Eugène Maurice Charlot (26 July 1882 – 20 May 1956) was a French impresario known primarily for the successful musical revues he staged in London between 1912 and 1937. He also worked as a character actor in numerous films. Early life and career Born in Paris, Charlot began his career as the assistant manager of several theatres in the French capital, including the Folies Bergère and the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. In 1912 he relocated to London and became the joint manager of the Alhambra Theatre, where he began presenting productions noted for their elegance and simplicity rather than lavish Ziegfeld-like stagings. Although he was instrumental in giving Noël Coward his first big break, Charlot's first meeting with the aspiring writer was less than successful. In 1917, Coward auditioned some of his material for the producer, who was unimpressed. "He plays the piano badly and sings worse," he complained to Beatrice Lillie, who had introduced the two men, adding, " ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]